Producers: Guy Ritchie, Ivan Atkinson and Bill Block   Director: Guy Ritchie   Screenplay: Guy Ritchie, Ivan Atkinson and Marn Davies Cast: Jason Statham, Aubrey Plaza, Josh Hartnett, Cary Elwes, Bugzy Malone, Hugh Grant, Peter Ferdinando, Eddie Marsan, Lourdes Faberes, Max Bessley, Oliver Maltman, Tom Rosenthal, Bestemsu Özdemir, Kaan Urgancıoğlu and Tim Seyfi  Distributor: Lionsgate

Grade: C

More in the mode of Guy Ritchie’s mainstream Hollywood movies than the edgier early ones he returned to with “The Gentlemen,” the cumbersomely titled “Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre” is a slick but old-fashioned spy extravaganza weighed down by an uncharismatic lead turn and a plot no cleverer than the title.  It comes off as a weak parody of a genre that’s already been parodied to death. 

The titular Fortune is Orson Fortune (Jason Statham, as stone-faced as he has ever been), an operative for Britain’s MI6, and a particular favorite of Nathan Jasmine (Cary Elwes, who seems to be doing a take on James Fox), a smooth lieutenant to agency head Knighton (Eddie Marsan).  Jasmine picks Fortune as the linchpin of the crew he assembles to recover something incredibly important—a thingamajig (read MacGuffin) called simply The Handle, which has been stolen and is being offered on the black market for $10 billion.  The other members of the team are J.J. Davis (Bugzy Malone), sharpshooter par excellence, and Sarah Fidel (Aubrey Plaza), a computer whiz who can also double as an alluring femme fatale as needed.

The crew’s first attempt to lift the briefcase carrying The Handle from a courier is foiled by a rival team headed by Fortune’s in-house nemesis, surly Mike (Peter Ferdinando, somewhat like a poor man’s Brendan Gleeson), which leads to a decision to infiltrate a charity function being hosted on his lavish yacht by Greg Simmonds (Hugh Grant), the billionaire dealer in black market goods who’s acting as broker-middleman in the transaction, where they will tap into his devices.  But to get close to Simmonds they recruit Hollywood superstar Danny Francesco (Josh Hartnett), an actor with whom he’s utterly obsessed; Danny’s dragooned into attending the party with Sarah playing his girlfriend in hopes that Simmonds will try to hit on her, and Fortune impersonating his rather implausible manager.

Their success is only partial, since the name of the buyer (as well as the exact nature of the gizmo being purchased) remain secret.  But Danny’s presence leads Simmonds to invite him, Sarah and Orson to his estate in Turkey, where the final arrangements for the transfer will be made.  Much cloak-and-dagger stuff follows, involving not just the lead players but Simmonds’ suspicious aides, lawyer Ben Harris (Max Bessley) and housekeeper Emilia (Lourdes Faberes).  Eventually the nature of The Handle is revealed, along with the identity of its purchasers and the use to which they intend to put it; and there’s naturally a culminating confrontation between Fortune and Big Mike. 

Statham handles that, as he does all the fights strewn throughout the movie, with cheerless efficiency; the script makes a halfhearted attempt to endow Fortune with a few character traits—he’s irked by being called in to earn his keep, preferring long spells of vacation time, and he has a love of the finest wines—but Statham remains robotic even when delivering a mediocre bit of banter.  Most of the cast do little but go through the motions, too.

But the picture does have a number of ingratiating performers.  One is Plaza, who puts her penchant for snappy repartee to good use even when the repartee is not so snappy.  Another is Harnett, who does an engaging riff on the pampered, preening but insecure star.  But by far the best is Grant, who’s simply delicious as the silkily greedy Simmonds, whose every moment is invested with connivance and one-upmanship. If Elwes is mimicking Fox, and doing a pretty good job of it, Grant is channeling Michael Caine at his most villainous, and doing a better one.  He’s great fun to watch from his very first scene, but it’s especially at the end, when Francesco has become enraptured with the billionaire’s gleeful chicanery, that Grant’s interaction with Hartnett becomes a comic delight.  (Wait for the end-credits scene, too.)

It’s almost worth watching “Operation Fortune” for these three, but unfortunately Statham gets in the way, as does the plot, which runs down feebly in the second half, closing with a revelation of the guilty parties and a silly world-takeover scheme that would have made even Ian Fleming’s worst imitators  blanch.  The MacGuffin is a bust, and the villains too.

Still, even when Grant, Hartnett and Plaza are off-screen, you can enjoy the settings, from Cannes to Turkey, as well as Martyn John’s production design, both luxuriously used by cinematographer Alan Stewart.  Tina Kalivas’ costumes—especially for Plaza—are lovely, too.  One might wish, though, that Ritchie had expended some of his old inventiveness in choreographing the action sequences, including those involving a cherry-red Mustang, and that editor James Herbert had done his job with a bit more verve as well; this “Operation” runs along like a smoothly-oiled machine, but it rarely raises your pulse rate, despite the hard-working Christopher Benstead score.

One doesn’t want to be too hard on the movie, whose release was postponed for a year (reportedly because some of the villains were Ukrainian) until it was acquired by Lionsgate from the original distributor, STX Entertainment.  And it would be a pity to miss Grant’s marvelous turn.  But it’s just a middle-grade action comedy that makes you recall better ones.

Producers: Irwin Winkler, Charles Winkler, William Chartoff, David Winkler, Ryan Coogler, Michael B. Jordan, Elizabeth Raposo, Jonathan Glickman and Sylvester Stallone   Director: Michael B. Jordan    Screenplay: Keegan Coogler and Zach Baylin   Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Tessa Thompson, Jonathan Majors, Wood Harris, Mila Davis-Kent, José Benavidez, Florian Munteanu, Phylicia Rashad, Thaddeus James Mixson Jr. and Spence Moore II   Distributor: United Artists/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Grade: C

Perhaps the best thing you can say about “Creed III” is that at least they don’t use the old tagline “This time it’s personal!”—though that’s what the movie is, even more so than many of its predecessors in the “Rocky+” franchise.  Because in this installment Adonis must face off against an old friend who has turned into a fearsome opponent out to even the score.  And in the process he must confront his own feeling of guilt while renewing his sense of self-worth and accomplishment.

As the film begins, Creed (Michael B. Jordan, who also directs) is finishing up his boxing career with one last victory.  He then moves into a managerial role, shepherding fighters like the new champion, Felix Chavez (José Benavidez).  On the docket is a bout between Chavez and Creed’s former opponent Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu).  But before that can happen, an old buddy of Donnie’s shows up—Damian Anderson (Jonathan Majors), who’s spent some eighteen years in prison and has just been released.

At eighteen, Dame (played as a young man by Spence Moore II) was a Golden Gloves champion, and young Donnie (Thaddeus James Mixson Jr.), was his devoted gofer, even eluding the watchful gaze of his adoptive mother Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad) to sneak out of the house and tag along to Dame’s matches.  When the two get into an altercation with a man during a visit to a convenience store after Dame’s victory, Dame is arrested and sent to prison; the specifics are doled out in fragmentary flashbacks as the film progresses.  Now he approaches Donnie for his help in getting back into the fight game, hoping to realize his childhood dream of becoming world champion.

Against the advice of astute trainer Duke (Wood Harris), who sees the guy as trouble, Donnie arranges for Dame to be taken on at their gym and spar with Felix.  And when Drago is injured in an attack at a posh party, Donnie argues that Dame should replace him in the title bout—which would set up a Rocky-like scenario of underdog against champion that would attract a huge audience.  Dame proves more than equal to the challenge, but his methods convince Donnie feels to come out of retirement and settle things in the ring.

The pugilistic action is, of course, complemented by domestic turmoil involving Mary Anne, who’s in delicate health after suffering a stroke and has been harboring secrets, and Creed’s wife Bianca (Tessa Thompson), whose hearing problems are seriously impacting her singing career.  There’s also the Creeds’ deaf daughter Amara (Mila Davis-Kent), whose training by her father causes a crisis when she uses what he’s taught her to settle a score with a bully at school.

This punch-from-the-past scenario concocted by Keegan Coogler {“Space Jam: A New Legacy”) and Zach Baylin (“King Richard”), from a story by Keegan’s brother Ryan, is meant to deepen the character of Adonis by conjuring up demons from his past, but its hokey and familiar quality comes off as formulaic.  Nor does it, or the casting, deal gracefully with plot weaknesses.  Is it at all plausible that an assault on Drago would occur without anybody but Creed figuring out—and then only much later—who the assailant was?  Or that Chavez, a welterweight at best, would be matched against a giant like Viktor, or a behemoth like Dame?  One can dismiss such queries by pointing to the suspension of disbelief, but disbelief can be dismissed only to a degree. 

Both Jordan and Majors are nonetheless fine in their roles (though again, Jordan seems on the small side), but their prominence in the story leaves meager room for others in the cast to impress, with Thompson and Rashad left little to do but look worried.  A good deal of the domestic running-time is devoted to Davis-Kent; she’s cute, to be sure, but the emphasis on her love of boxing makes one wonder whether a “Miss Creed” installment might be lurking somewhere down the line. 

As director, first-timer Jordan does a workmanlike job, though some viewers will question his decision to focus on the drama rather than the boxing; there are the usual training montages, of course, but the actual matches go by fairly quickly, and the culminating battle between Donnie and Dame is curiously bloodless by the standards of the previous franchise films.  The decision, moreover, to switch from a packed-stadium perspective to one that isolates the two men in a kind of nebulous dream ring undermines the effect rather than enhancing it.  It may italicize how single-minded each must be in doing battle, shutting out distractions to concentrate on his foe; but it comes across as an artsy attempt to turn the match into sort of an Essence of Boxing moment, not without a pretentious spin. 

Even that sequence, though, is well crafted by the technical crew.  Jahmin Assa’s production design is excellent even if one might question how that convenience store remains utterly unchanged from the flashbacks to the present day when Creed revisits it, and Kramer Morgenthau’s cinematography is fine, if murky at times.  The editing by Jessica Baclesse and Tyler Nelson is adequate without being exceptional, and Joseph Shirley’s score hits the right beats without being memorable.

This is, of course, the first film in the franchise in which Sylvester Stallone doesn’t appear, and frankly he’s missed—something one might not have expected.  It’s hard to say whether “Creed III” would have been improved by his presence, but what’s clear is that while the movie isn’t an embarrassment, it’s far from a knockout.